Burgers & Brands, Revisited

We've previously asked ‘What should you build first, your burger or your brand?’

And we hedged with an ‘it depends’ answer.

We discussed two flashy burger brands that were generating media buzz - Mr Beast Burger and Monty’s Good Burger. They’re pretty different things - Mr Beast is the world’s best-known YouTuber, who extended his brand to burgers by layering his fame onto an outsourced ghost kitchen network (and one bricks-and-morter. The Monty’s Good Burger founders, on the other hand, created a well-thought-of vegan burger concept and used their influential network to seed the brand online.

One thing clearly separates the two - quality. For the crowd behind Monty’s - the burger is the brand, to a large extent. Dubbed ‘The Burger that Instagram Built’ - the founders have done a great job of building distribution for the brand by making everything about it Instagram-friendly and shareable. But make no mistake about it - the burger is the star.

This is where Mr Beast has hit some trouble. In the Beast Burger world, Jimmy Donaldson – Mr Beast – is still the star, and he licensed his name to a burger product that he didn’t really have any control over.So when the quality of the Beast Burger started to slide, and customers started posting pics of raw meat and sloppy delivery to social media, it’s Jimmy’s personal brand that takes the hit.And so unsurprisingly, he sued the company charged with building his burger empire to prevent them from slopping further grease on his personal brand.

The legal action, filed in New York on Monday, accuses Virtual Dining Concepts of not ensuring the quality of the burgers, claiming they were at times "inedible".

"As a result, MrBeast Burger has been regarded as a misleading, poor reflection of the MrBeast brand," the lawsuit claims, going on to say it "has caused material, irreparable harm to the MrBeast brand and MrBeast's reputation".

It also claims Donaldson "has not received a dime" from the partnership.

Virtual Dining counter-sued Jimmy, seeking $100million in damages.

VDC alleged that Donaldson didn’t deliver on his contractual obligations, including publicity and promotional work, failing to publicly support MrBeast Burger, and making untruthful and disparaging statements. VDC says that Donaldson’s actions have caused “enormous financial harm” and that the burger restaurant’s reputation was destroyed.

“This case is about a social media celebrity who believes his fame means that his word does not matter, that the facts do not matter, and that he can renege and breach his contractual obligations without consequence. He is mistaken,” the suit reads.

Now Mr Beast has a beast of a legal challenge on his hands, and one that cuts to the core of what makes a personal brand successful - trustworthiness. Beast Burger sold millions of sandwiches but every customer is now a node of risk for the Mr Beast brand. If their trust of Jimmy erodes, maybe they start watching his videos less, and the core brand takes a hit from the lackluster burgers.

If you follow politics, it might remind you of the many, many shoddy brands spun out of the Trump empire, that similarly hit the rocks because of poor product quality. Trump Steaks. Trump Vodka. Trump University are just three. Trump would sell his name as a sticker to put on pretty much anything, for the right price.

What they, and Mr Beast’s undercooked burger brand have in common is that the person who was the brand didn’t ensure that the product quality could stand up in the long run.

Monty’s Good Burger, on the other hand, continues to get good press, because the burger is the brand, and the burger continues to be a great burger.

Co-founder Lexie Jayy has re-oriented her life around the business and is wholly obsessed with the food, working closely with the chef. Another interesting lesson from Mr Beast is the risk of going to big without having the guardrails in place to ensure that your scale is something you can handle.
It’s interesting to listen to how iconic Burger Brand Five Guys went from being a small barely-solvent family shop to a global franchise - being very clear about what makes a Five Guys burger a Five Guys burger.

Maybe Jimmy Donaldson should have listened to founder Jerry Murrell’s mom before launching a burger chain.

Jerry Murrell's mother used to tell him, you can always make money if you know how to make a good burger.

In 1986 — after failing at a number of business ideas — Murrell opened a tiny burger joint in Northern Virginia with his four sons.

Five Guys now has more than 1,500 locations worldwide and is one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in America.

Like Monty’s, the Five Guys story starts with obsession over the quality of the product, an entire family bought into finding the right potato-and-oil combo to make the best fries, the perfect bun, etc. And so, the product becomes the brand. And the product is strong and has tight rules on what makes it strong, and consistent, and that is the bedrock of what makes a brand a world-beater.

THE TAKEAWAY

• There’s a saying “How you do one thing is how you do everything”. For people approaching your brand from one touchpoint, be it a burger or a university degree or a bottle of vodka, how you do that one thing IS your brand in their eyes, so if you screw up anything, it can effect everything.

• Choose brand extensions that you are confident will be aligned with you in the long run, and where the quality is never in question. Saying no might be the best option.

GO DEEPER

• Go behind-the-scenes at the Mr Beast burger launch